Transparency and open government advocates urge President Obama to establish a Security Classification Reform Steering Committee for the purpose of correcting the problem of over-classification.

Let's just skip the Security Classification Reform Steering Committee and urge President Obama to immediately revoke all agency heads' original classification authority and declassify ALL existing documents! No questions, review, or exceptions—no shit.

Advocates that cannot immediately envision a totally transparent government may want to consider using any steering committee to ensure that all original classification authority is dependent on a declining derivative classification actions cap. Requiring all agency heads to continually choose and swap out (declassify) derivative secrets under their original classification authority.

Even our most rabid secrecy proponent will tire of continually choosing and swapping secrets under the declining derivative classification actions cap—probably long before debating and deciding which single secret must be maintained to "preserve our nation" (many would pay to eavesdrop on that debate)!

An overview of our classification hydra—it has flailed about for decades causing all manner of fright, mischief and misery—the sooner it's slain the better.
UPDATED 12/08/2012 PIDB, 2012 Report to the President

Our wonderful National Archives is out with the PIDB's recommended changes to our system of (de)classification. Unfortunately its recommendations are entirely too complicated and perpetuate the currently dysfunctional system.

Instead of wasting its time trying to reform our currently dysfunctional classification system the PIDB recommendations must challenge the very notion of systematic classification of government information as either helpful or required.

On those extremely rare occasions when short duration opaqueness may be deemed necessary by an agency head or the president, ensure that a considerable and continuing burden is met to prevent the information from automatically transitioning to transparency.

As for the massive amount of data currently classified at all levels the recommendation must be simple and direct—declassify all currently classified data, no questions, no review, no authorization, no aging, and no backlog, no shit!

Some of our leadership routinely predict doom if they're required to govern our nation transparently, but these predictions have never been accurate. What's more likely is they're simply confessing an ignorance of how to transparently govern. However, the solution to their ignorance is not systems of state secrecy and opaque governance—it's education or leadership replacement.

It's contemptible for our "new" alt-white-house's attorney general et al. to condemn, threaten, or prosecute leakers and journalists. Our government head is a pathological, compulsive, and sociopath liar actively conducting a disinformation and misinformation campaign against our citizenry. This is a much graver threat than a leaked phone conversation with Mexico's president†.

It's laughable for the attorney general et al. to implicitly or explicitly assert that they'll improve this government's effectiveness by suppressing leaks or prosecuting journalist.

Our "new" alt-white-house is "Exhibit A" on why transparent governance is the qì (气) of America's democracy—and all democracies.

Episodes of the "new" reality show, "Fledgling Fascists Fight Lowlife Leakers" will likely run through the summer 2017 or until enough "new" alt-white-house supporters11 decide it's time to pull the plug.

Who could predict that our "new" alt-white-house would launch the de rigueur prosecute-the-low-life-criminal-leaker-campaign after just 27 days!?

The current prosecute-the-low-life-leaker-campaign may have some difficulty distinguishing who the "low-life" is—prosecutor or leaker? How ironic that our "new" alt-white-house now seeks to prosecute the low-life leaker that it was implicitly citing as authoritative just months ago! Then the criminals were Hillary Clinton and the media!

Taking charge of an investigation to "slow-walk" it into oblivion is a time-honored congressional method of dealing with potentially controversial facts, particularly if those facts could cause great public panic, outrage, and demand for response.

But, "slow-walking" the investigation may limit the available remedies for any domestic-foreign collusion to illegally influence the outcome of the United States presidential election of 2016.

How ironic and baleful if the Secretary of States' "email server" is part of a larger foreign government's disinformation campaign, which has snared congressmen and senators as willing or unwilling participants or dupes, respectively!!?

Well...,at least some in our intelligence community have begun proposing a reduction in secrecy. Now would be a good time for our intelligence community to end all secrecy and begin focusing on the more challenging attribute of information relevancy.

Please feel free to use the following decision-tree to swiftly transition to transparent governance:

Is document classified?

Yes: immediately remove all classification markings, publish document, and go to next document.

No: immediately remove all classification marking, publish document, and go to next document.

Repeat until no government documents remain classified or unpublished to the public domain.

Alternatively, as a time and cost savings measure, enact legislation revoking our entire system of classification as harmful to national security and authorize the immediate uploading of all government documents, as is, to our National Archives for immediate public access.

Secrecy must never shield or protect any nation whose behavior menaces or mocks minimum comity for international law.

It's worth noting that the "hacks" (SQL Injection and XSS) discussed in U.S. CERT JAR-16-20296 are well-known and understood vulnerabilities of common commercial Internet web connected computer platforms.

Seven members of the SSCI send letter to President Obama urging declassification and public release of information related to allegations of Russia's interference in the most recent presidential election cycle.

Why is this information classified in the first place? How does a democracy investigate or remedy allegations of illegal electioneering using secret data?

Mr. President, "open government" requires government leaders capable of governing transparently and which in fact govern transparently. Most, if not all of our current leaders are incapable of conceiving how transparent government could function9 and many flaunt their deficiency.

Really, our nation, which has perfunctorily "classified" information for decades is uncertain about the number of secrets it maintains!

"...In 2005 there were a total of 258,633 original classification actions, or new secrets, reported;..."

While this number of "original classification" actions is problematic for our democracy it's only a small fraction of our government's accumulated secrecy problem.

The real secrecy problem is in the annual and cumulative number of "derivative classification" actions, which exceeds by orders of magnitude the "original classification" actions. It will surprise nobody that our government is clueless about the number of annual and cumulative "derivative classification" actions it now maintains.

Our government leaders are good at talking about transparent governance, but unless the rate of declassification actions routinely exceeds the rate of "derivative classification" actions, by orders of magnitude, transparent governance will be just talk.

Congress must enact and the President sign a bill entitled "National Transparency and Holiday Act" under which all government agencies and government contractors immediately* declassify any document that a miscreant classified (Top Secret, Secret, or Confidential) during the preceding calendar year.

*You cannot use the words "automatically declassify" because our government thinks "automatically declassify" means, review to see if the document should remain classified!

Really, James Clapper instructing our IC to serve as a government role model for declassification—you can't make this shit up! Next week there'll be a joint announcement that China's President Xi will be mentoring our IC on how to serve as the government's declassification role model!

It's been rumored that former government lawyers David Addington and John Yoo strongly objected saying that President Xi does not have the authority to be an IC mentor. All objections were dropped after it was pointed out that Xi may skip any mentoring role and immediately declassify and publish all our government's documents.

No need to think when subjecting our thoughtfully abused and abusive chaos of classified government documents to scrutiny—simply and speedily publish all government documents and refrain from classifying any government documents in the future.

Journalists are beginning to articulate the tragicomedy of our "system of classification". But, their articles read like a briefing you'd hear when you're "read in" to a classified program. After the umpteenth "read in" you begin wondering whether everyone superintending our "system of classification" is a G. Gordon Liddy clone?

How officials think our "system of classification" works, but doesn't, is the tragicomedy.

Whenever our government asserts some data are "top secret" or “black, special access required” our citizenry should completely excluded such data from any discussion or analysis, as in totally ignore or disregard the data.

The government logic, which ridiculously maintains "if you knew what I'm not disclosing, you'd ... (fill in the blank)" is so yesterday. If our government refuses to disclose government data then it should not be permitted to rely on such data for any government purpose, without extraordinary documented and disclosed justification.

Stated differently, total government transparency is the default, without narrow and extraordinary justification. An auto rubber stamp or assertion of "top secret" or budgeting a program as "black, special access required" would most emphatically would not even come close to extraordinary justification!
UPDATED 08/31/2015 NYMag, Could Hillary Clinton Face Criminal Charges Over Emailgate?
Wonder how long it will take before everyone throws up their arms and concludes our system of classifying government information is arbitrary?

A government employee should not be using private email accounts (or servers) to send any official government information (classified or unclassified) period.

That said, reviewing unmarked emails for classification after the emails have been sent for the purpose of determining if former Secretary of State Clinton sent "classified information" is a Sisyphean exercise.

The individual generating the alleged classified information is responsible for derivatively classifying the information using the original classification authority guidelines—it's simply not a prerogative of the person receiving derivatively classified information to alter the classification. Although, a person with access to the program's classification guide could conceivably challenge derivative classifications, as a practical matter this is rarely done. Government communications would be worse than they already are (as difficult as that is to imagine:) if everyone began second guessing derivative classifications (i.e. a second derivative guess about the original derivative classification guess7)!

If the truth be told most of those participating in classified programs routinely violate classification guidelines and procedures—most have never read the program's classification guidelines!

Maintaining government transparency would significantly reduce or eliminate all the Sisyphean exercises associated with our arbitrary and nonfunctional classification system. Stated differently guess work and secrecy will always combine to create an arbitrary and nonfunctional system.

And costly in the case of our currently arbitrary and nonfunctional classification system.

Additionally, for the sampled documents it's unclear how the IC IG audited the purpose for which a document was classified (e.g. speaking with the derivative classifier, consult the classification guide, assume a document is correctly classified etc.)?

Our "War on Terror" governments for the last dozen or so years seem to be solving a question not directly asked: can our nation create so much security that we're no longer secure—we may be approaching a solution?

If so, it seems like an unnecessarily destructive, uncertain, and costly solution for discovering government transparency.

NSA invited our media into its Maryland facilities to tell a story (Inside the NSA: America's Cyber Secrets) of using its computing power to intercept and decrypt data, which enabled our leaders to kill some of our historical enemies, citizens and NSA employees. It's hard to tell whether NSA is making a case for its relevance or irrelevance and opaqueness or transparency?

When NSA was recently asked by a reporter to provide emails about its cooperation with any documentary production NSA responded by asking the reporter to narrow the FOIA request to specific email address NSA personnel! (You can't make this stuff up!!)

Congress will waste decades tinkering around the edges of our opaque and dark systems of governance instead of implementing totally transparent governance. Propaganda and fear mongering, however well meaning, are not substitutes for totally transparent governance.
UPDATED 07/21/2013 NYT, Math Behind Leak Crackdown: 153 Cases, 4 Years, 0 Indictments
Well, Admiral Blair got it half right when stating this needs to stop: …“We were hoping to get somebody and make people realize that there are consequences to this and it needed to stop.”…

Unfortunately, Admiral Blair was referring to "leaks" instead of ending our methods of dark and opaque governance. Most of our existing leadership have become so accustom (taught) to dark and opaque governance they think it's the default—they express a stupefying amazement when any sunshine impinges their otherwise dark and opaque environment.

We must demand that our future leaders learn that totally transparent governance is our nation's default, without exceptions. Like our genetically close cousin, the mouse, future leaders must automatically run from all dark and opaque spots that cloud the sunshine flooding into their environment.

The negative consequences referred to by Admiral Blair attach to our nation's failure to teach our future leaders how to transparently govern our citizenry with total transparency, without exception.6

The panel is a frightening reminder of how poorly we have been and will be served by methods of dark governance. Panel participants, no doubt narrowly competent, demonstrated a complete ignorance about the negative implications their activities may have on modern civil societies.

Instead panel participants parrot untested, if not untrue platitudes, seem content to assume their activities are beneficial and fail to demonstrate any heterodox thinking required of participants in modern civil societies.

The ACLU representative's entirely orthodox complaint that NSA's data vacuuming, storage and analysis programs erode the attorney-client privilege may qualify as "radically heterodox" thinking for some of the panel participants?

WOW, a lawyer in defense of our magnificent and beautiful Constitution against our government, seemingly incapable of measuring and constraining or bounding its behavior—thought such primates had gone missing or extinct, until this sighting.

More evidence that our government doesn't understand the problem, as if we needed more evidence! I'm sure our government really believes their assertion is believable and effective—unfortunately (or fortunately), others will not.

Our government must pursue total transparency with the same tenacity it pursues total awareness!

Regardless of your understandings about government secrecy you must credit (or condemn) the tenacity with which our government continues pursuing secrecy, notwithstanding the extraordinary costs (excluding embarrassment).

It seems silly to continue secretly building and hiding costly needles in costly haystacks; leaking the costly needles and costly haystacks, forecasting "grave national harm"; condemning leakers as traitors, prosecuting leakers, and jailing leaker for life; and then opaquely repeating the cycle with ever more costly needles and haystacks...!

Our government's solution, to date, seems to be doubling or tripling or quadrupling down on oppressive and coercive methods—these methods have consistently failed and are likely to do so into the foreseeable future—leaks likely occur in response to a perceived overly oppressive and coercive government (oppressive and coercive methods simply confirm the leaker’s perception!).

Our government can adopt methods of transparent governance or continue engaging in an escalating, costly and cyclical contest of oppression and coercion with the leakers, supporters, and citizenry (domestic and foreign)5. The former seems to be the much more sensible and successful path for our government to pursue (if somewhat counter-intuitive).

If the NSA director's proposition that Snowden's leaks have caused "irreversible harm" is accurate (a dubious proposition reactionarily asserted by most if not all proponents of secrecy4) it has sped our nation's transition to transparent governance. If the director's proposition is inaccurate it has sped our nation's transition to transparent governance on a circuitous and costly track.

A global underground railroad for whistle-blowers should not be required to convince our nation to lead the global transition to transparent governance with all diligent speed.

It redefines cynicism to call on our citizenry to debate our security and privacy without disclosing all of the information relevant to the debate or threatening to prosecute those that try to provide information to our citizenry relevant to that debate!

In the 21st century it's difficult to imagine a faster method of sabotaging and harming our social and civil society networks than creating the perception or reality that our government is conducting secret mass data vacuuming operations against these networks without constitutional authority, lawful process, probable cause, transparency or specific user permission.

On the positive side our government, in response to this latest leak, instead of invoking their standard delusion that leaked data is not public data quickly moved to disclose additional information about the program(s). Our government must immediately move to publicly disclose all details of this and other programs conducting secret mass data vacuuming operations against our social and civil society networks.

It seems preferable for our government and leadership to learn how to transparently govern our nation and citizenry than for our nation to continually build and maintain massive systems of secrecy—those asserting secrecy sustains security are perpetuating a harmful myth.

More governmental secrecy leading to massive mischief—can't wait to hear our leaders' explanations—so far they've told us it's nothing new, been going on for seven years; the privacy compromise was effective two years ago in securing our safety; and my favorite, so far, is from Senator Graham, I'm a Verizon customer and I don't care if NSA has my phone number; ... more to follow!

Hey, on the positive side it's another press leak for our FBI and Attorney General to chase down, it will give all those NSA computers in the desert some data to crunch and nobody will have to declassify the Domestic Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Act) Court order in 2038—do you feel safer, now?.

Our government (Executive, Congress and Judiciary) has learned to routinely assert "national security risk" as justification for opaque governance and all matter of mischief. As if, speaking or writing these words is some talismanic pathway for compromising our citizenry, Constitution, democracy, basic rights and fundamental concepts.

Disabusing our government of their talismanic notion will not be easily accomplished, but it certainly begins with our press asserting its fundamental rights and our citizenry vociferously demanding that press freedoms trumps national security.

Until government secrecy is understood as a sickness requiring a cure we will endure well meaning, but nevertheless meaningless serial government pronouncements of "grave harm" or "very very serious" or variation on the theme "The British are Coming" as justification for enforcing and reinforcing opaque governance.

Our government's "grave harm" and "very very serious"and "The Russians are Coming" pronouncements are irrefutable because each pronouncement is invariable followed by additional opaque pronouncements intended as further justification for mandatory opaque governance.

In this context these serial pronouncements of "grave harm" and "very, very serious leak" and "The Terrorists are Coming" are as meaningless as the next "very, very, very serious leak" or the next "very, very, very, very serious leak".

Ending our government's secrecy and opaque ways is as simple as choosing to protect our transparent press freedoms in lieu of "very, very ... very serious leak or "grave harm" or "The Chinese are Coming" pronouncements.

Of course, proponents seeking to perpetuate secrecy and opaque governance will predict and promise our nation will end when secrecy and opaque governance ends—not unlike those perpetually predicting and promising the end of our nation, if not the world!

1. There has been some small progress in recognizing that our system of classification is expensive, arbitrary, and totally dysfunctional—the debate is over whether the secrecy system should be salvaged or scrapped.

2. Some of our citizenry may diagnose our government's secrecy as a special strength, but most if not all our government's secrecy is more accurately diagnosed as a self-perpetuating, subtle and subversive sickness.

Of course those participating in our government's system of secrecy are unable to perceive any sickness—for them it's not only as a special strength, but a necessary, if not sufficient strength.

Not unlike those participating in a sick relationship are unable to perceive how sick their relationship is, at least until they've left the relationship and sometimes spent many years in treatment.

3. There has been speculation that Edward Snowden maybe fleeing ahead of an inquiry into his espionage for the Chinese—if the speculation is proved more than a CIA disinformation campaign then he can be pardoned for leaking and indicted for espionage, if any.

4. Participants in our government's secrecy sickness are by definition unable to assert that a disclosure is benign—an algorithm would flag them as a potential security risk.

5. One wonders what level of government oppression and coercion is consistent a developing (or optimal) advance economy?

6. Proponents for perpetuating the paradigm of dark and opaque governance will often assert that we must continue our dark and opaque governance because others will not follow our transparent leadership—really, so let others continue with their dark and opaque governance, if they can!

7. The original derivative classifier is doing little more than guessing about what should be classified when she subjectively applies the program's classification guidelines (assuming she has read the guide).

A second derivative classifier would be subjectively guessing about the first derivative classifier's guessing when she initially applied the program's classification guidelines!
Judges in general refuse to perform the function of a second derivative classifier—many rightly stating they refuse to "second guess" the government.
Who'll perform the function of "second guesser" on the information in the 305 emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

8. Who will soon forget the unseemly (not to mention unconstitutional) episode of national security operatives interfering with Congress as it exercised its oversight responsibilities with respect to torture (i.e. Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture)?

9. Many of our leaders freak-out over something as simple and mundane as public disclosure of diplomatic or Secretary of State communications and emails.

10. Providing our citizenry with all available data is especially important at a time when our prospective president not only panders to an alt-right but also traffics in an alt-reality. Even with all available data our citizenry have difficulty reconciling their perceptions with real data.

For example in the most recent Ipsos Perils of Perception 2016 survey of Americans, when asked: "Out of every 100 people, about how many do you think are Muslim? " responded 17%, which is 16% points higher than the real data of 1%)!

Really, after only 35 days and one episode of "Fledgling Fascists Fight Lowlife Leakers" journalists are the "enemy of the people" and some press members are shutout of a "new" alt-white-house briefing, which may not be legal?

Although it's shockingly disgraceful to hear our "new" alt-white-house berate our nation, people, and press it's important to recall that our nation is not fragile. Its robustness surprised our founding father, Thomas Jefferson as he expressed in a letter to Edward Carrington from Paris:

"The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of those tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here. I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' [sic] the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them..." --The Founders' Constitution Volume 5, Amendment I (Speech and Press), Document 8, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Edited by Julian P. Boyd et al., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950--.